Make PEOPLE Your Bucket List

You.

You mentioned this word twice. Oncologist. So you're going through something.

Yeah. You know, back in March, March 23rd of 2019, I was diagnosed with something pretty rare. It's becoming a little bit more common. It's called aml. It's acute myeloid leukemia. And. And they had given me a very short period of time. The doctors in Houston at one of the medical clinic clinics gave me a short period of time to live. And the news. I didn't have any symptoms, so it was just. It was odd. I mean, I was going through a routine.

You had gone out for just a checkup or what?

Well, it's actually interesting. I. I knew that I always wanted to have kids. Even though I was told I couldn't have kids, I thought, man, right. God is so good. I'm seeing miracles around me. And not, like, provisional miracles, which are awesome. I'm not talking stuff like over nine months, oh, we can't afford the softball field. And that elderly comes in and donates the difference money to make sure the softball field happens. Those things are amazing. And I'm not trying to discount that. I'm talking, like, instantaneous miracles. I was seeing around me healing. Healing of hands, answers to prayer, you know, people having. Being free and being lifted of a lot of things, and I'll. I'll just leave it at that. And so in my own life, I was like, man, you know what? If I'm going to have a kid, right? Like, I better, like, practically do something that I know I can here on Earth. And so I went to go have my sperm frozen, and I went to the Houston Fertility Clinic and did the deal and just left there like it was nothing, right? It was just a routine. And a week and a half after I had left there, I got a call from the doctor, and he's like, hey, man, my wife's a hematologist. So medically speaking, I'm not. I'm. It's illegal for me to share this with you, so I'm not going to share too much about who the doctor is and why. But he was. He's like, my. My wife being a hematologist, she knows results of blood work. Your blood work came back, and I feel like I have an obligation to tell you that you need to go. You need to go see somebody, and I can recommend them. And so he did. This individual did. And. And I went. I was like, okay, well, I better get checked out. That's not normal, right? So it's more of a. I'm going to Check this off the list. They're probably wrong, but better safe than sorry. And so I went and saw a hematologist, have blood work done. And the oncologist came in and said, I got good news and I got bad news. Would you like to hear? Which one would you like to hear first? One of those things. And I'm like, okay, well, just give me. Just give me the news, right? I'm not. I'm here for a reason, so I don't think anything's good, so just tell it to me. And he goes, okay, well, bad news is, is you have something called aml. Good news is, is you got a couple months to live. And. And that's how he delivered the. The news and walked out of the. Out of the room and said, I'll give you a few minutes like they do on bedside manners that they learn. And. And I just prayed to God. And in that moment, I didn't know.

That'S what they do. Like, they go, hey, guess what? You got a couple months. See you later.

Well, it was more like, hey, we're going to talk. He did say, we're going to talk about your treatment. You know, options. And then I want to go over a. But he's like, any. I mean, I. Look, I was in shock because I was processing it. Give me a couple of minutes.

Bulletproof at that point.

Totally bulletproof. Man, I was in the best shape of my life, you know, serving at church. It was after I had said yes to the heavy calling on my life. And, you know, I was, you know, God was pruning my life and exposing some relationships, and in a positive way. I didn't look at that as a negative. And, man, I was just, you know, I was like, scripture was just, like, coming off the pages, and there was so many things I was applying in my life. And, you know, almost everywhere I went, there was a. An opportunity for discipleship. Even like a car dealership at a breakfast joint, having coffee just seemed like God was. Was really showing up in moments, instantaneous moments. And it was. It was beautiful. And so then to have that. What would appear like a big obstacle to come. I don't know, man. There was, like, freedom in hearing that, because I thought for the first time in my life, I'm like, God, you know, this is where I've heard the. The statement, a faith that's not tested can't be trusted. I'd heard that lots of times, and I didn't know how I felt about that statement until that moment. And I was like, man, A lot of people are going to think, you know, when they hear about this, that, you know, you know, my faith is going to be tested and it'll waver, right? Like, why me? Because then that's when it becomes inward. And I just said, God, you know, I know your promise is true. And you said, here on earth as in heaven. And when I'm in heaven, your promise is that my body will perform perfectly. And so I know that that means in heaven, same as here on earth. And so now my body just has to catch up, use me in a different way. And that was one of. One of the first times I was able to really elevate my prayer. I said, God, speak to me in a way you've never spoken to me. Let me see things the way I've never seen things before. Right. Let me get out of the way you speak. Use me as a vessel in a way where I know that I'll give people hope. And if it's my time, it's my time. I'm ready to meet my maker. Because when you ask me, what did you do with my son, I'm proud of being able to answer that question. And so everything else was just going to be a bonus, man. And it just shifted my perspective of my number one language, which was time. And so it just, like, shifted over gear. Not like I had a bucket list of places I need to go. My bucket list became people, man. It wasn't like the vacation I could take or the thing I had to accomplish. I knew that kingdom work really started that if God's going to limit my time here on Earth, like, it was time to shake the gates of hell. And I knew that I needed to change the world around me to do it.

That first off, incredible attitude, right? Like, that's right. Only with faith. Right. Only with faith does that happen? I. Yeah, for sure. I think most people, they get that news, and there's probably some shock right away. There's probably some really foreboding depression and those type of things. They don't. They don't just automatically go, hey, all right, God, I got. I got to get to work.

Now.

You just. You just shorten up the timeline a little bit. Now. I'm doing math in my head real quick. 20, 19, couple of months. It's 2023.

Yeah.

What happened?

So I had a. I had surgery that. That June, and then. And the surgery was successful. And. And then we. We did a second round of treatment after surgery that was recommended. And so then I. I went through that process, and I never rang the bell. AML patients are, like, historically individuals who ring the bell just because of the type of blood deficiency that it is. And. And then the following year, in 2020, the first part of 2020, my bone marrow wasn't producing the right levels of red blood cells. And so I had this really, really great. Just this lovely story about a doctor from Columbia Institute who was coming down to Houston to MD Anderson. And they just kind of, like, connected the dots and did a pretty unique procedure. And. And I had that, and it was successful. And I had to learn how to speak all over again because I couldn't speak. And that was three weeks before my daughter was born. She was born on July 10th of 2020. And a few weeks before that was when I had the procedure. And so I couldn't complete a sentence. It's probably good for some people around me to not hear me talk so much, but it was. I don't mean to joke about it, but I'm serious. And there was like, this, even in that, as frustrating as it was, there was simultaneously, like, this level of. I mean, I was just. When I say the word freedom, I mean it in a way where, like, if I had, like, anxiety about what you're going to say at a big meeting because, you know, you got to have a difficult conversation with somebody. I thought about those moments, and I thought about, like, how I can be so much more intentional with my words because God limited it for a period of time. And we didn't know if I was going to be able to ever complete a sentence again. And on. On July 8th, sorry, July 7th, or is July 7th, we have a video recording of me recording myself giving a message to my unborn daughter. And I said, God gave me a vision. And he did. God gave me a vision that you're not going to be born on the 14th. You're going to be born on July 10th. And he's gonna allow me to. To speak. And in the recording, I actually started getting, because it was really hard for me to speak, but I was doing it anyways. And my voice started improving, and I was able, like, on camera, making declarations of prayer, speaking to my unborn child. I said, God is healing me because of you. You're the miracle that's going to give me my voice back. I'm going to be able to be more intentional with my words and show you and teach you what God's teaching me. And I thank you every day from the time you're born. My prayer when I wake up is going to be. I think, God, thank you. That today's one day closer that my daughter, not love faith, gets to accept Jesus Christ as her savior. And I still to this day, that's, that's my prayer in the morning. So. And as of today, you know, it's a day by day. It's day by day, I take it, day by day. We've had a couple of flare ups.

Recently, but yeah, not here, not cured, but improving. Right. Like, or at least maintaining.

Yeah, there's a, there's something that's recent for people that may be interested or know somebody with aml. There, there is. Sometimes there's a mutation and so my mind mutated. It's called AML mrc. And so I take a chemo pill and I go in and sometimes I do blood transfusions and other times there's a way that I can, you know, they give me different, different recommendations of dosage and, and so when they do that, it can sometimes be not good. And it affects me, you know, like anybody, you know, you know firsthand what that's like, you know. And they don't make a recommendation based on what's going to make you feel bad. It's what's going to make you get better. And so I believe that a combination of prayer, healing affirmations, visualizations and healing declarations right. From scripture, as well as that, that mixture of medicine is, is keeping me going. And you know, some days are really good and other days when they're not, you know, I lean in. Those are days I really lean into worship and I listen to worship music more. So it's not just like in the car, I'll actually carve out time. And I put my phone on do not disturb and I have a certain playlist that puts me in a really interesting posture to, for me to remember, you know, characters, individuals in the Bible who had it a lot worse than I do. Not as a way of comparison.

No. Like me and Joe, we're good buddies right now.

Yeah. You guys are good buddies?

Yeah, we're pals. It's like, hey man, I got this. You know, and that's really a false statement. I don't got this. And I'm okay with that. The situation I'm going through is Limes and Epstein spar. It's a pain thing all day, every day. 24, seven and nothing less than a five on the pain scale. Most of the time between like a six and eight.

Yes.

So you. That could really get somebody down. That could really attack somebody mentally. It is Obviously physically. And I'm like instead of being. Because I have, I have a choice on how I react to. I can't control that it's happening to me. But I can control. I react to the thing that's happening to me. I always, always hate hearing people say in control of my own destiny. Because I don't believe you are things that happen to you that you have no control over. The only thing that you control is how you react to it. And my reaction is whether this is a short period of time or my new normal, I'm actually thankful for it. Because I've never been closer to God. I've never had more conversation with God. I've never been around more godly people. I've never had more people praying for me. I've never ever in my entire life asked anybody to pray for me until this particular instance. And so there are things being revealed to me through this that. Jim Johnson, you ain't got it, brother. I got this. And you're going to be okay. Whether you improve physically or not, you're going to be okay. And there's this peace that comes with that.

Yeah. Wow.

And. And actually a bit of joy. Like there's like hey, my faith is being tested and it is up to the test, brother. This is great. I love it. And that's not a like okay. I have to think about that and practice that and put that mindful. It is just what it is. And I think that's faith. I think that is this okay. No matter which way it goes, I'm covered. Right? So you okay on time? Like I got a couple more things I want to get into.

Please. That's the way for you, man. I'll make as much time as you want, bro.

I love you for this, man. We're probably going to make this a two parter.